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The bloody diamond

The bloody diamond
This is life

Welcome to the imperfect world

Welcome to the super-real world where survival comes first, much before the high alter preachings of excellence (for others only). So if you are the one who does not have to survive, or does not care - you have a choice not to remain here.

For others, please have a seat and take cover - here anything can happen anytime and you may just become a faceless co-lateral damage. Everything here is related to life and death, pains and agonies, treacheries and conspiracies, cons and deceit, treason and betrayals, despair and darkness - we just do not live in any perfect world.

BUT that is why the blog is here at all - let there be light. It aspires to show the way, to train myself and my friends in the defense against the dark arts. It is also related to hope and courage, renunciation and redemption, indomitable will and lust for life - the immortal battle with the dark side. Red flag fluttering in the gentle wind, all hands on deck, war cries in the air, daggers drawn, no quarters given nor asked, no hostages taken - we must fight till the last man standing

Rest assured, you are in good hands. These hands, with all the talents or the lack of them, with all the liveliness and the inner brooding, with the over-sized ego and the extra-ordinary humility, with all the goodness and the devilish designs - have been war veterans - they have fought for decades in the battle of survival.

Happy surviving




Love in blood

Love in blood

The inescapable war within

It is the curse of the human that we are constantly at wars. War with the Government, society, family, spouse, children, Boss, peer, friends, neighbours. Some of these are overt, some crude, some plain enmity but some are subtle, some barely palpable, some low key and guerilla types, some are cold as razors, some are dry like the funeral pyres.

Most of these cannot be own with force or when you try for winning - sometimes you have to lose to win them. Some are more like trials than wars, they never show the faces, never let you see their pimples, just shadows, the kafkaesque faceless executioners take over.

For all these, we need inner strength, we need strategies. Sometimes the objective is survival, sometimes it's plain escape from the random blades, sometimes the heady delight of beheading the enemy. Sometimes it is sheer joy to be alive, sometimes happiness comes over from a walkover or just a walkaway, without even a careless looking back. Often it is a mixed feeling - the agony, the ecstasy, the brutal orgasm or a complete disenchanted detachment - a shelter in the NOW. They sometimes need courage, need cunning finesse, sometimes ruthless lack of values of a son-of-the-bitch, sometimes daring flamboyant recklessness, maybe even stoic nonchalance. But the best of the best generals in the wars of life, always win without unnecessary bloodshed or even none of it at all.

But the most painful and fearful of all these wars are the ones with oneself. It could be a conflict between mind and heart or even the soul that holds our values dear. And this is one war that always hurts, always wounds, always bleeds one dry, always keeps one awake through the fearful night with the shadows of the beautiful lacey curtains blowing in the gentle wind and making shadows of our most intimate fears within. It is like a nation under seize, and alas, there is no escape. When you will kill yourself softly, no survival strategy ever works.



Thursday, April 7, 2011

Survive from being at the mercy of the interviewer


We all give interviews. Even a KG student gives interview in another school. There is nothing much to know in it and we all know all of it. Or is it ? How many of us know how to give good or top-class interviews? How many of us can rise from the gully cricket to the world cup levels? How many of us do have the confidence that we can crack ANY interview?

Instead of that ANY attitude, people generally depend on the MANY factor. It means one will go on giving interviews with the background music of “We shall overcome some day”. The problem with this thinking is twofold. The dream jobs don’t understand probability and have to be just earned, they are never given (unless you have an illustrious father) – the competition is too much and fierce. Cracking them are like being on the India World cup team and needs tremendous talent – attitude - training at the least with a pinch of luck. For those jobs, one usually go and have a look at some of the competitors – they often look like God and speak like the Satan – and shhhhhhhhh, goes the confidence.

At the other end, the lower category jobs can sometime be given to someone amateurish, but at the mercy of the interviewer and at a much lower salary and benefit level than one deserves. The logic is simple, these companies are not bothered about quality and look for basement bargains and if they think of you as a basement, they will bargain for you at the lowest price possible. But then, the celebration can begin – ohhhhhhhhhhh, I have got a jooob. Means, the one knows all about interviews, till he/she goes on fails the ones which are the really worth fighting for, or killing.

The lower end positions also speak for the perception one leaves and the respect one commands at the interview table and the responsibilities are matching. How does one feel cleaning shit for their company? I have seen a lot of people so unhappy but continue doing just that, even without any future prospects or strategic reasons. Some others, I have seen many again including few of my own ex-students, leaving those jobs (most of them from campus placements) in a few months and cooling their heels for sometime in the family couch in their papa’s hotel.

Forget about the greats, even the really good offers never come to anybody who cannot command respect, who cannot match the wit gun to gun at the interview table, who cannot play the mind-game that is an interview. We constantly give interviews all our lives, not only the formal ones to get a job, also for the job-change every few years (without which one neither rises at a good pace nor can get the value he deserves), for the promotions, for impressing the client, stumping the Boss of the Boss, bowl out the Boss himself at times. Opportunity comes in many faces and the interview basics must be made the second skin of one who really wants to be successful. Each one also has to be customized because based on the customized research you must project the “fit”. Campus interview is often the easiest of the ones because often the companies come mentally prepared to take a small percentage of whatever they get here, and also sometimes they come with under-the-table understandings. They need people and here they come for a bargain of what they know they can expect. In all other situations, in a country of 121 crores, you must show you are pretty different from the others to get a differential treatment, anytime anywhere. Beside differentiation, you need some innovation in handling situations, subtle ways of communication mostly non-verbal, some techniques of selective projection and some clear and palpable value proposition that will take his off stump. But for all these again, one probably need months of practice even after he is provided with all the tools and techniques, the directions and the guidance, the insights and the wisdoms. Everybody needs his own customized document for the strategy and the answers to handle different kind of situations. But memorizing them cannot be the solution, when there can be thousands of questions and it’s varieties. The answer lies in creating strategies for each category of questions that takes care of a genre of situational handling. It is ultimately himself who will go to the ground and play, not the coach or the captain or anyone else. For all this, one need the highest form of knowledge, that is self-knowledge. The final thing needed is professionalism, the urge to be extra-ordinary. The game is not for the amateurs.

To become different, to be in the big league, one needs preparation on a different level that matches the league. It is the numbers that gets one to the door, then it is everything else that sails him through the door. It is like a dynamic stage performance where you simply cannot think of all your dialogs at the stage and get the oscar. Training is only a small but necessary part of it, an outside support that provides the guidance and the direction, the real core still remains to be the dogged and focused pursuit of excellence that makes the differentiation. It sounds like sheer stupidity to think that no training is needed. Nobody knows much before they are taught a bit. Everybody can sing or dance, at the family functions or festivals, then why do some people learn it? Even the Champions do it beside all others. The all time great tennis players like Bjorg, Agassi, Nadal all roamed around with personal trainers. Even the greats among the greats like Tendulkar thanks Gary Kirsten when the evening ends, as if Kirsten can teach many new things to Tendulkar after he rules the game for 22 years. No, it is the direction and objective assessment that he still needs.

One trouble is that trainers often need to be trained. An area which is a mix of science, arts and black magic beside a pinch of strategy and a tablespoon of psychology applications – it is often hard to get a good trainer. Most of them have never been through the process themselves, rarely been through the actual process from either side of the table – and then take the help of the google window, download some presentations among the million (out of which 99% are most ordinary if not bogus) and a swish of the wand – they become soft skill trainers. Good soft look will help, low salary will help even more and the responsibility of the Institute ends there – “what more do you want ? We have even kept a full-time soft skills trainer for you!!”. I will suggest let them train the faculties and not the students, on a “who needs it more” basis. A good trainer on this side needs to understand clearly the view from the other side of the table. The industry point of view not only includes what it says but also what it really wants from the employees – and that needs some clear crystal-like thinking and insight. The lack of original thinking and the understanding of dealing strategy kills the possibility of the real values of these junks. No real outstanding trainer worth his/her salt (and the peeper if you please) will easily take up a job of doing it unless he/she is getting a real fancy package. The market is huge, the need is absolute and it is only the lack of confidence on himself or herself that pushes him /her to do it on a fixed set of people. Those dealing at the industry side are far more capable are averse at teaching others of how to beat them at their own games, they consider it suicidal.

If one does not want to learn, it shows a nice confidence on his capabilities and the eagerness to take responsibilities of his life in his own hands. The only bad thing is that practically that confidence flies out of the window by the time you say Hello at the table and then the moment of truth comes and there is only one option left, the obvious one, submit to the mercy of the interviewer

2 comments:

  1. I recall we had a discussion on this but then I was unaware of the context. Very interesting and well narrated. I will recommend some of the others I know. Worth a read.

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  2. Hello, just wanted to say, I liked this article. It was inspiring.
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